"I think my coaches knew. They'd seen it coming. My dad ... I forget. I just know he was mad. When she turned 14 two years prior, Liu realized that skating was emptying her bucket rather than filling it. Between spending 12 hours a day at the rink and completing online homeschooling, Liu rarely interacted with anyone other than her coaches."
"I didn't pick where I was going. They just sent me off to certain facilities. When asked who 'they' were, she said her dad was 'definitely involved in it and I don't know who else.' She also addressed rumors that her father used a radar gun to test speed of jumps, saying, 'I guess he did? Yeah.'"
"I don't have a lot of memories from that time. I blocked them out for sure. When she sees videos of herself skating at the time, she said it feels more like watching a movie than remembering real life. Liu said she suspects she has mentally blocked that experience because 'it was so bad. I just didn't want to remember.'"
"Every day was the same for me. Practice was so serious. I would cry after falling on every jump. The team I had around me was so strict. So I was in fight-or-flight mode all the time. It wasn't until Covid struck in 2020 that Liu finally had a day off skating."
Alysa Liu, a current gold medal ice skater, surprised everyone by retiring from competitive skating at age 16, announcing her decision publicly without prior warning to prevent others from convincing her to stay. She made this choice after realizing at 14 that skating was depleting rather than energizing her. Liu's training involved 12 hours daily at the rink combined with online homeschooling, and she spent two years living away from family in Delaware, Colorado, and Italy. The intense, strict environment caused her significant emotional distress, including crying after every jump failure. She has mentally blocked many memories from this period, describing it as being in constant fight-or-flight mode. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 finally provided her with a break from skating.
#athlete-burnout #youth-sports-pressure #mental-health-in-athletics #early-retirement #intensive-training-regimens
Read at TODAY.com
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